Allowing pet stores to offer only shelter & rescue dogs fails to force public to adopt second-hand pit bulls
SAN DIEGO, California––A May 3, 2024 federal jury award of $3.9 million against Cedar Pet Supply owner David Salinas and alleged puppy mill brokers Ray and Alysia Rothman has animal advocates rejoicing and pet industry economists shaking their heads, because it means two different things, neither of them bad for commercial puppy breeders.
The verdict in PetConnect Rescue v. David Salinas, the latest in a string of similar cases with comparable outcomes, demonstrates yet again that legislation preventing pet stores from selling puppies from breeders can be enforced, albeit at considerable expense and effort.
Laws can be enforced, but fail to achieve goal
But PetConnect Rescue v. David Salinas also demonstrates that even when pet stores are compelled by law to display only dogs offered for adoption by animal shelters and nonprofit rescues, the public cannot be compelled to adopt the array of mostly second-or-third-hand pit bulls and pit mixes available from shelters and rescues.
People wanting a small dog, a puppy, a breed other than pit or pit mix, a dog without bite history, and most of all, a pet instead of a project, have little choice except to buy directly from breeders, online if necessary.
Pet stores wanting to move dogs can either do business with bogus rescues acting as brokers for breeders, or set up their own bogus “rescue” operations to relay dogs from breeders.
Many pet stores just quit offering dogs
Many pet stores, including many of the outlets for the Petco and PetSmart chains that pioneered hosting shelter and rescue dogs for in-store adoption, have simply quit offering dogs and cats altogether, focusing instead on selling pet food and accessories.
Explained Bryan Pease, lead trial counsel for the plaintiffs in PetConnect Rescue v. David Salinas, “Rather than comply with a 2019 law banning the sale of non-rescue dogs in pet stores, David Salinas kept on selling puppies from puppy mills, falsely claiming they were from PetConnect Rescue, a well-known and respected charity.
“This verdict,” Pease assessed, “should put the puppy mill industry on notice of more litigation in the works against all of their other fraudulent claims.”
Shelter adoptions drop steadily for 45 years
But the puppy mill industry, as a whole, is unlikely to suffer any harm from the verdict. Industry media, so far, scarcely seem to have noticed it.
Dog adoptions from shelters and rescues have since 1980 declined from about 2.5 million per year to barely two million, even as the number of U.S. households has increased from 79.1 million to 131.4 million households.
Relative to the total number of U.S. households, shelter and rescue market share for dog acquisition has fallen by half.
Breeder market share doubles
Conversely, the breeder share of the dog acquisition market has doubled, from 26% in 1981 to 54% according to recent annual ANIMALS 24-7 surveys of online ads offering dogs for sale or adoption.
Two sets of survey data posted by the HumanePro web site maintained by the Humane Society of the U.S. put the breeder share of acquisition far lower, at 28% and 30%, respectively, but respectively acknowledge that 49% and 56% of the dog population are purebred, meaning that even if those dogs were acquired indirectly somehow, they almost certainly originated with breeders.
Preventing pet stores from selling dogs obtained from breeders appears to have only accelerated the trend, already building for about 30 years, of breeders selling dogs directly to the public through web sites and social media––while accelerating the parallel trend of “rescuers” purchasing puppies from puppy mills for resale.
(See “Why we cannot adopt our way out of shelter killing.”)
Legislative & litigative success fails to bring marketplace results
Despite the backfiring effect of such legislation, Humane Society of the U.S. president Kitty Block and Sara Amundson, president of the subsidiary Humane Society Legislative Fund boasted at the end of 2023 that seven states have now passed laws to stop the sale of puppy mill puppies in pet stores, along with 480 municipalities.
Pease has enjoyed previous success against pet stores selling puppy mill puppies, notably in a 2020 verdict against a San Diego company called National City Puppy, but not in putting the offenders permanently out of business.
“Pease shut down David Salinas’ stores in California with injunctions in 2020 in separate state court cases brought on behalf of the Companion Animal Protection Society and Animal Protection and Rescue League, as well as defrauded customers,” recounted a prepared statement posted to Pease’s web site.
“David Salinas has since moved to Utah,” the statement continued. “He has several more puppy stores there and in Nevada.”
Select Puppies not Hunte
Acknowledged the statement, “Ray Rothman, the other main defendant in the case, continues to supply puppies to Salinas through Select Puppies, a notorious puppy mill broker in Iowa owned by Brian Mohrfeld, which used to be called the Hunte Corporation.”
Founded in 1996 by Andrew Paul Hunte, the company changed owners and names after Hunte died in 2015.
“The federal jury heard trial testimony from investigator Pete Paxton, co-author of the book Rescue Dogs, which chronicles his undercover investigations into the puppy mill industry on behalf of the Companion Animal Protection Society, the statement on Pease’s Facebook page mentioned.
“Records produced in the case show that Paxton had investigated many of the squalid mass breeding operations where Salinas and Rothman source puppies for sale in pet stores across the United States.”
(See Secret agent for animals: Pete Paxton.)
2021 ALDF case still pending?
The Animal Legal Defense Fund web site lists as still ongoing a comparable case filed as a class action by ALDF in U.S. District Court in December 2021.
The defendants, summarized Clark Kauffman for the Iowa Capital Journal when the case was filed, are “a group of Iowans, led by JAK’s Puppies Inc., an Iowa corporation named after founders Jolyn Noethe and Kimberly Dolphin.”
JAK’s and an entity called Rescue Pets Iowa “stand accused of routing puppy mill dogs to California, where they could be sold as ‘rescue’ puppies,” Kauffman explained. This was in violation of the same 2019 California state law that brought the case against David Salinas and Ray and Alysia Rothman.
The Animal Legal Defense Fund charged that JAK’s Puppies “churns through thousands of designer and pure-bred puppies annually and acquires its dogs from puppy mills.”
“Puppy laundering”
Wrote Kauffman, “The lawsuit alleges that after the Iowa attorney general sued JAK’s and others in 2019 over ‘puppy laundering’ designed to thwart a Chicago puppy-mill ban, JAK’s embarked on a separate scheme to sell puppy mill dogs to California consumers.”
To do this, the Animal Legal Defense Fund alleged, Jolyn Noethe and Kimberly Dolphin “created an elaborate vertical scheme whereby each of the necessary steps in the puppy laundering — purchase from puppy mills, rebranding of puppies as rescues, transport of such rebranded puppies, and sale of such puppies to consumers through pet stores — was perpetrated by knowing co-conspirators/associates.”
Rescue Pets Iowa
One of the false fronts that Noethe and Dolphin used, the Animal Legal Defense Fund said, was “Rescue Pets Iowa, formed two weeks before the California ban took effect,” according to Kauffman.
“Russell Kirk of Ottumwa was the owner of Rescue Pets Iowa, and was also a defendant in the lawsuit brought by the attorney general,” Kauffman reported.
According to the ALDF lawsuit, Kauffman continued, “Rescue Pets Iowa was a corporate shell whose only purpose was to serve as a conduit through which JAK’s could route the legal titles for commercially bred dogs so they could be labeled as ‘rescues’ before reaching consumers in California.
Court case also failed to stop Kirk
Other entities allegedly formed as part of the “puppy laundering” scheme were The Pet X Change, headquartered at Noethe’s home in Britt, Iowa, said to have paid for the certificates of veterinary inspection used to transfer puppies from Iowa to California, and Subject Enterprise Inc, based in Wesley, Iowa, a trucking company owned by a Noethe relative.
“Upon their arrival in California,” Kauffman said, based on the ALDF filing, “the puppies spent two to three hours at a business named Bark Adoptions – a garage operated out of the owner’s home, which was outfitted with 20 stacked cages. From there, the dogs were quickly sent to pet stores, where they were displayed in cages bearing the legally required statement disclosing the shelter or rescue group from which each animal was obtained.
“As part of the resolution of the Iowa attorney general’s lawsuit,” Kauffman mentioned, “Rescue Pets Iowa was forced to dissolve in October 2019. However, Russell Kirk’s involvement in the alleged puppy laundering ring continued,” through another false front company “which he allegedly ran with his brother, Noethe’s alleged ‘romantic partner,’ the lawsuit claims.
(Facebook photo)
Familiar names
Included in the Animal Legal Defense Fund case were charges of “money-laundering and wire-fraud violations of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, as well as violations of California’s Unfair Competition law and the California Consumer Legal Remedies Act,” Kauffman continued.
Additionally named were Bark Adoptions, identified as “a California corporation run by Stephanie Vaughn of Winchester, California, and Ana Diaz, of Menifee, California; Micada Inc., which does business as Animal Kingdom Pet Shop and is owned by Adam Tipton, a resident of California; and Pet Connect Rescue Inc., a Missouri-based company owned by Ray and Alysia Rothman,” who also were co-defendants in PetConnect Rescue v. David Salinas.
“Permanently dissolved” but still in business
“The 2019 lawsuit brought by the Iowa attorney general,” Kauffman finished, “resulted in a consent judgment” that permanently dissolved both Rescue Pets Iowa and Hobo K9 Rescue, run by Noethe.
“All of the defendants promised to refrain from transferring dogs in an attempt to evade laws restricting the sale of commercially bred dogs; and Noethe, Dolphin and Kirk were prohibited from organizing any new non-profit corporations or serving as officers or directors of any animal non-profit for three years,” Kauffman added.
Before that, Des Moines Register reporter Courtney Crowder revealed on May 2, 2020, Hobo K9 Rescue and Rescue Pets Iowa “exported at least 3,600 dogs, likely bred outside of Iowa, to stores in California, Illinois, Florida and New Jersey from September 2016 to September 2019, according to the Illinois attorney general.
$1.1 million in two years
One client, “Pet Luv — a strip-mall pet store in the shadow of Chicago’s Midway Airport — sold $1.1 million worth of Hobo K9′s ‘rescued’ puppies in a two-year span, charging more than $1,000 for each dog,” Crowder wrote.
“Five miles further south, the Park Pet Shop ‘adopted out’ a single goldendoodle puppy for $3,600.”
Further, Crowder charged, “The for-profit puppy brokering business that helped facilitate the ring is still transporting animals across state lines,” including driving “more than 200 puppies the 25 hours from Iowa to Washington nearly weekly since the start of 2020.”
The Washington clients included Puppyland in Puyallup and Puppyworld in Olympia, Crowder reported.
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Could you clarify something for me – is it still unethical to pay mills for dogs? I mean, that’s how I was raised but rescue groups all over the US are now regularly marketing adults and adolescents and puppies that they describe as having been rescued from mills. They are deliberately vague about the details of these transactions, particularly when they involve puppies, and many have stock cut/paste responses to anyone wondering how they got these dogs. The response always claims that the breeders overbred after COVID and now can’t move all their dogs so they want to dump ones that don’t sell quickly and move on. Some stock responses claim that the breeder is going out of business – a claim that will be made repeatedly for months for, presumably, multiple breeders. Virtually none of these groups will respond when asked whether they paid the breeder for the dogs. I find if very difficult to believe that the mill operators would bother dealing with rescue if they weren’t being reimbursed.
Why is this now accepted? Why are would-be dog owner absolutely forbidden from going to a pet store and buying a dog, but rescues posture as heroes for going to a puppy mill and buying multiple dogs? Am I missing something?
I would also like to point out the incredible number of pets being rehomed through social media. My local community pages have a surprising amount of people giving away or reselling animals–including those coveted small breed dogs and trendy designer breeds. (We live near puppy mill country, so there are a lot of these breed types where I live.) There is usually a story about a person moving, a divorce, financial problems, or the death or incapacity of the former owner, and how they “don’t want them going to a shelter.”
The public has been convinced, it seems, that shelters are dark and terrifying places where every pet coming in gets the needle. Never mind that most shelters would probably be elated to get a dog who is an easy intake, quickly adopted, and gets their happily ever after story with no crises. We all know the issues with “free to a good home” ads here so I don’t even need to get into that.
I would suggest those looking at the social media pages that have been set up for their community, as well as considering breed rescues, as well as retired breeding dogs. Don’t just peruse your local shelter, give up, and run to a pet shop, internet site, or Amish farmers’ market. If you are looking to buy a puppy there are numerous sites that advise you what to look for in a responsible breeder. Here is one of them: https://pupquest.org/breeders/ .
It should also be noted that shelters in every part of the country, regardless of their dog situations, are great places to find a pet cat.
great job
It’s important that we consider all aspects of any issue that we are considering lending our support to. Some have backfired or produced unwanted consequences.
I did ask an HSUS staffer about the unintended outcomes of the pet store bans. I was told that since the bans have been going into effect, the number of dogs in USDA licensed kennels has dropped by 1/3 (I’m assuming this information was acquired from USDA reports).
If the sales had transitioned online, the number of dogs in those licensed mills would have remained the same. HSUS has also maintained that the target of these bans isn’t pet overpopulation, but to end the cruelty associated with puppy mills.
It is still alarming to see the rise in pet sales through other means, and I’ve no doubt that the non-commercial breeders don’t have any better conditions than the licensed kennels; there are undoubtedly high numbers of these around the country that have escaped detection by the USDA and animal control agencies.
Assuming that what the HSUS staffer told you is correct and does come from USDA reports, it nonetheless conflates market share with production volume, and may invert the meaning of the statistic, which may mean simply that breeders are now selling more dogs faster. The HSUS staffer’s claim also overlooks that breeders selling dogs online can easily elude USDA inspection, and that faster sales, achieved by custom breeding to buyer preference plus selling directly to customers, does require keeping less dog inventory back on the farm.
Pet store sales of dogs from breeders began to be banned at the local level circa 2007. Since then, total U.S. dog acquisition continued to increase for a few years, continuing a longterm trend, as millennials began homes and acquired dogs, then decreased, except for the peak COVID years of 2020-2021. This longterm decrease continues, reflecting the aging population of “Baby Boomers,” who are acquiring and keeping far fewer dogs. For that reason alone, breeder inventory could be expected to decrease.
But the breeder share of dog acquisition has always exceeded the shelter & rescue share, by a relatively narrow margin of 26% to 19.4% as of 1981, rising to 54% / 20% by 2013, as “oops” litters born at home gradually dropped out of the picture due to increased acceptance and practice of spay/neuter. The current ratio appears to tilt even more strongly in favor of breeders, by anywhere from two to ten percentage points depending on which data set one uses.